To us the world is different
by SapSorrow
Summary: In which Thor has been sleeping with a lot of different girls to get Loki out of his head... at least that's what he thinks he's been doing. *grins*. Thorki, with slight het at the beginning. A curious combination of smut, angst and humor!
1. Chapter 1

**To us the world is different**

_"But what I do know is to us the world is different –_

_As we are to the world, but I guess you would know that –"_

_VNV nation – Illusion_

1.

She is not what he has been wanting, none of them have ever really been what he has been wanting; though there is _something_ different about this one. Not just that she is beautiful – though she is, of course she is – but because, hateful though it is to admit it, she looks so curiously like _him. _Not just the dark hair, androgynous frame and bewitching smile but her eyes are uncanny – a sparkling silver – green that made Thor squint in wonder. They could almost really have been Loki's eyes.

_Do not think it, _he tells himself – _but you always do think I don't you? _He catches her looking at him askance and realises that he must be visibly scowling. He tries to clear his face and shrug away the unbidden, un- stoppable thoughts –

"Thoughts" he grunts, monosyllabically, in answer to her unspoken question.

"Care to share?" she tilts an eyebrow, her voice lilting, musical, ever so slightly teasing.

"No" he replies, shortly.

"Well -" she smiles, taking his hand in hers – her hand looking impossible small by comparison, tender and soft, slender pale fingers surprisingly electric on the skin – "Aren't you the conversationalist?"

_Dear gods, _he thinks – _she even sounds like him. _The thought is uncomfortable but does not get in the way of leading her through his chamber door.

"It is not conversation that I seek" he growls.

She smiles again and her smile is curiously patronising – _I'm not really fine with that but I'll take it for now – _says the look on her face – and she turns down her eyes, her smile too knowing for Thor's liking. Even so he cannot tear his eyes away from her delicate fingers working at the fastenings of her gown. Female attire has always been something of a mystery to him and so he barely wonders at how easily the gown falls from her, like a flurry of green leaves from a tree, eyes only for the pale skin she exposes, the body lithe as a new sapling but soft to the touch –

- and the touch is desperate, urgent; he divests himself of all clothing quickly, the better to feel that cool pale silver against the warm gold of his own skin. He tries to kiss her more quickly than she will allow, making him feel that she is laughing a little at his desperation, kissing her all the fiercer for her pretence of reticence. The need, the heat is barely even for her, so much as it is the need to mask, to quell what he really wants. _Would that I could _he thinks – but everything that led him to her only reminds him of all that he would choose to forget; her eyes, her slender fingers playing him like a harp, the crooked smile that brings him right back to square one again.

_I would do anything – _he thinks – _anything to her that could cure me, anything that could put out the fires you have lit in me brother –_

_Pretend you didn't even think that. Pretend that she is the beginning and the end. Pretend that somebody that anybody else ever could be, pretend, pretend, pretend – and they call _him _the trickster._

She looks up at him from where he has pushed her down amongst the sheets, mounting her like a lion – and her bedroom eyes take on a hint of exasperation –

"You're thinking again -" she says, a tad accusingly, irritation playful in her voice – "It does not become you."

He glares at her, one hand on her breast, another tangled in her silk – like hair.

"I _think –" _he says, slowly and just as slightly annoyed – "That this would go much better with a lot less talk from you." he pulls her head back rather harder than intended, to kiss – bite at her pale throat. She gasps and laughs her rippling laugh at the same time –

"So you always say –" she murmurs so quietly he can pretend not to have heard her. Still, it occurs to him to wonder, even as he parts her legs, that he has no idea of who she is – that he has never seen her about Asgard before tonight ; that in truth he does not even know her name.

Suddenly, though, it all seems remarkably unimportant, every other concern blasted apart by the feel of sliding inside her. It is curiously, deliciously like sliding into a river beneath a painfully burning sun – even at this moment she is cool to the touch – a blissful relief to his scorching skin. Tight and yielding all at once she provides a kind of mindless perfection. Mindless is good. Mindless is better than _cool – so cool and sweet to my warmth, fire and ice – are we not always thus brother? Two halves of one perfect whole? _

"I wonder –" she whispers, close to his ear, fingers running fiendishly up the back of his neck, hooking a slender leg around him to pull him deeper in, drawing him perilously close to the edge – "I wonder who you're _really _thinking of –"

It makes him so angry he could slap her – when he would not want to admit _that _to himself – let alone to anybody else. He growls a soft warning she does not heed, her breath like flakes of snow against his face –

"Who is it you really want me to be? Say it –"

He digs his fingers into her shoulders, grinding into her punishingly hard, trying to transfer the anger into mere pleasant sensation –

"Shut up" he growls – there is only one other person he has wanted to shut up this much and it does not help him now to think of this; she simply laughs, arching her back in a pain she seems to relish –

"No I don't think so –" she hisses – "Not this time – not when –" she gasps as he thrusts into her savagely, not wanting to hear, not wanting to acknowledge what a part of him already knows – "Not when _I know –" _she spits – "I have always known –" she fires the last inevitable shot just as he comes uncontrollably inside her – "_- brother."_

She shimmers beneath him – not in a metaphorical orgasmic shimmer, but in a glimmering wave of golden sparkle and light until he opens his eyes to look down, breathing heavily into Loki's smirking face.

"What's more –" Loki continues, in the merry chatting tone of someone on a picnic – "You knew too didn't you?" he continues to gently stroke the back of Thor's neck in the brief moments as his orgasm subsides to be quickly replaced by a surge of slightly forced righteous anger and a powerful attempt at disgust. His instant reaction – to yell and punch Loki in the face just makes the trickster laugh at him and continue to laugh at him as he quickly, awkwardly and very roughly gets off him and hurls him out of the bed.

Loki looks up from the floor, wiping blood from a split smirking lip in a way Thor wishes was less damned sexy.

"Was that it?" he mocks – "Because I was all prepared for several more crashing great waves of righteous denial –"

Thor cuts him off with a noise he wishes was not a rather oafish "Aaaargh!", but it is nevertheless –

"Why?" he bellows – "Dear gods why would you do this?"

The smile swerves from Loki's face as quickly as a dark cloud wiping the sun from the sky and far more frightening –

"Because you wanted it!" he snaps – "I have never done anything than entirely as you want it or been anything you did not want me to be!"

"You lie!" Thor yells back, jumping out of bed to swing a punch, that misses Loki completely as he dodges, nimble, dressed again in the blink of an eye – albeit back into the green dress – that still looks strangely good on him.

"Wow" Loki states flatly, neatly avoiding all further blows – "No I mean really wow, brother – I knew you were obvious but really – yes, Loki tells lies – whoever would have thought –"

"LOKI!"

Loki's eyes are a violently swirling fire pit of emotions, changing rapidly from mocking laughter now to steely seriousness –

"And yet of course you still manage to be wrong –" he sneers – "Because _that _was the truth."

"You would not know –" Thor tries to sound more certain – "How would you presume to know what I want?"

"Yes because you're so _subtle _dear one – how many girls has it been just this week brother? Six, seven? You don't do that unless you're really trying hard to avoid that special someone –"

Thor snorts –

"And why the devil do you think that would be you?"

"I notice you don't deny it. Denial starting to hurt your knuckles? I mean – did you even ask one of them their name?"

"How would you even know that?"

Loki grins widely and Thor feels like he has been caught in a trap laid by a very cunning shark.

"Oh I was _so _hoping you'd ask me that! "

Thor closes his eyes –

"No" he attempts. It fails.

"Oh yes" Loki nods, playing like a cat with a mouse – "I _was _every one of them. That was me every time. I am every girl you've ever had brother and you _know _I'm not lying this time."

Thor grasps for more denial but it feels faint and far away. He _does _know, damn him. Damn them both. Too great a part of him has always known.

_x_

**So this is my first attempt at Thorki – don't flame me too hard I know I have work to do on the voices and things, but this is just sort of a practice fic before I start anything that tackles anything more deeply so I'm sure it's not hugely original. I'd love feedback on how it seems to be going….there are maybe two to three chapters more of this if people are interested? **

**….and just cause there does not need to be another fic in the world called "Illusion" this title is from the song "Illusion" by VNV Nation. It's an amazing song, quite Thorki to my ears – if you can listen to it do. :-) **


	2. Chapter 2

**There's more! **

**2.**

Thor struggles blindly to both take in and know how to react to Loki's positively arsenic laced words. He is almost grateful for his own intense stubbornness when he finally finds it in himself to utter another –

"No".

"Oh dear –" Loki shakes his head – "I never do cease to marvel at your level of pig headedness brother. Let me see – _yes. _Yes and still yes – or do you need the show and tell version?"

Thor frowns –

"Huh? The what?"

"_Huh the what –" _mimics Loki, rolling his eyes – "The mighty Thor ladies and gentlemen! _You _know – the slide show – watch and learn brother –"

With a casual golden shimmer Loki turns into a buxom blonde girl with laughing blue eyes. Thor is dismayed, but not surprised to recognise her as what he had assumed to be the new tavern girl at The Bee and Barb.

"You remember me of course –" s/he grins – "I was the first. You were looking for something as _female _as possible were you not? Something the very opposite of what you really wanted just to convince yourself it wasn't what you wanted? Tsk. Didn't I do _well _though? And here –" he turns into another girl; slighter, darker, a little taller. Thor recognises her too of course and, having finally, dismally cottoned on, does not like where this is going –

"Loki, enough!" Loki flounces and giggles as winningly as when he had, as this girl, got Thor's attention the first time.

"Shhh!" he pouts, half school teacher, half whining school girl – "You're spoiling the _show! – _and I've been rehearsing this for _aages!"_

"Loki!"

Loki turns into a third, fourth, fifth girl in quick succession, giving Thor the walk through as he does –

"And look! The boobs are getting smaller, the hair is getting darker, why yes we're getting paler and _the eyes – _My goodness – it's beginning to look a lot like LOKI!" he announces this with a mighty flourish, turning into the girl from earlier that night, his voice becoming almost a song. He springs back into Thor's space, stroking his face tender and teasingly just like before –

"Look me in the eye –" s/he says very softly – "And tell me you see _any_ illusion here at all –"

The touch lingers like electricity on Thor's skin and he grabs Loki's wrist to hold him at arm's length. Loki looks at the blazing eyes and tightened fist and grins;

"Really now – you wouldn't hit a _woman _would you brother?"

Thor growls in frustration, hating the part of his brain that always falls for every trick – that lets Loki get away with this even when he knows in his head that his brother is no more a woman than he is.

"Turn back" he grumbles.

"Yes because given my previous statement that sounds _so _enticing! I do so love it when you have to pummel me to express your desires –"

"I am not feeling any desires!" Thor snaps hollowly and unconvincingly. Loki raises and eyebrow –

"Oh really? Because from where I'm looking –" he looks almost comically downwards. Thor shakes him.

"Oh _al- right –_" Loki drawls – "Give it your best shot – pound me –" he twinkles back to his own form, wincing slightly –"Oh for a better phrase" he adds just before Thor throws him across the room.

"Did it ever occur to you –" he remarks conversationally from a prostrate posture – "That I _like _it when you throw me around? It's quite like flying. I always _was _jealous you could do that you know-"

Thor pulls back a fist to punch him again and Loki promptly disappears. For a moment Thor stays like that, frozen and frowning –

"Loki?" he mutters, looking around.

"I'm _invisible _you utter moron. Dear gods you should see your face. Let me help – invisible – it means you can't see me – but I'm exactly where you left me."

Thor makes a grunt of comprehension and brings his fist down – it crashes violently into the marble floor. Loki reappears, lounging across Thor's bed –

"Well – not _exactly" _he shrugs, grinning as Thor yells in pain, clutching his shaking bleeding fingers.

"You know, I don't get you Thor" he frowns, suddenly pensive – "You never used to have this issue – I never used to have to be a girl for you to come to me – what went wrong?"

Thor stops and stares at him hard –

"_You _are asking _me _that question? It was not I who went wrong."

For the briefest second Loki looks hurt; but he has become used to swallowing hurt down like a pill. He has taken so many of them now that his blood is all but over – run with it. He washes this one down with forced casual, languid dismissal –

"You stopped wanting to want me because – what? I did a naughty?"

"You killed eight thousand people!"

"So I did a _really big _naughty – so what, you don't want me because I went evil? Now you can't touch me? It's not catching you know."

Thor opens his mouth to speak several times and fails. He sighs, looking at his brother with sadness and passionate confusion –

"You are – not evil." He mutters. Loki rolls his eyes –

"Oh please, redefine your definitions perhaps?" Thor looks puzzled – "It means you're wrong!" Loki snaps – "Of course I am! – But that's hardly relevant at this –"

"No?"

"No!"

"Then why does it bother you so?"

"It doesn't _bother _me – it's just – beside the point – and annoying."

"You. Are. Not. Evil."

"Who are you trying to convince?"

"You are the one who seems to be struggling."

"I _am _evil" Loki scowls – "Of course I am". Thor looks at him searchingly –

"Then why is it all I can hear is my little brother asking if he can play villain today?"

Loki's eyes flash furious, cutting and sharp as ice –

"Shut up Thor!" he yells, sitting up with his fists clenched, knuckles white – "Shut up! I have been always as I was expected to be! I've been the bad guy everyone knew I would be and I've done it well! Don't think you know me any better than anyone else just because for you I was what you wanted instead! You don't know me! Nobody –"

"I know there is goodness in you." Thor's resolve is so strong his words argue with everything inside his brother and try as he will he cannot ignore this horrible suggestion. He tries harder –

"You're wrong! You only see it because I let you! And I let you see a lie –"

"Loki –" Thor sighs, tiredly – "Loki don't – brother please –" awkwardly – "Please don't cry"

"I'M NOT CRYING!" screams Loki, tears streaming down his face. Thor's anger melts in a heartbeat; he feels helpless, knowing he will always melt when his little brother starts to cry. Every instinct is to hold him tight and let him have it out like one of his childhood tantrums. There is a terrible wall between them now – but he has never been one for walls – he pushes straight through it to sit beside Loki on the bed and hold out his arms. Loki pushes him away repeatedly but the attempts are feeble until Thor pulls him crushingly close to comfort. Loki beats his fists at Thor's chest but it is like being bothered by a butterfly – he holds him tighter so there is no room for struggling.

"I hate you!" Loki yells at first, then mumbles repeatedly and then snuffles – "I hate you brother – why don't you want me anymore?" The last little whimper and Loki's suddenly beseeching, lost face break Thor's resolve.

"I _do _want you" he growls, infuriated; he would never have admitted it to make himself feel better – "But –" he adds – "It's wrong."

Loki blinks his last tears away, scorn dancing into his eves and imbuing him with fresh energy and optimism –

"Wherever did you learn those pathetic sentiments? Your simpering Earth friends? What – did Captain Cut-out jam his moral compass so far up your arse that there's no longer any room for me up there?"

Thor growls in exasperation and pushes Loki away, Loki falling on his back across the bed and looking up to smile –

"Well. Isn't this familiar?"

Thor shakes his head –

"Loki you are tedious. Also –" he scowls – " faintly humorous."

"Only faintly? You would me with your words – and startle me with your syllables, do take care there brother – and also –"

"What?"

"Me" Loki disappears his clothes again and Thor cannot look away, nor hide from his eyes how perfect and beautiful Loki is to him, so different from him and everyone else in every way that he has never stopped being intrigued and enthralled, more captivated than any woman could ever make him. There is a look in Loki's eyes he can read too well and cannot ignore and an unspoken demand there – _don't make me say please._

"And –" Loki adds – "If you give me that "because it's wrong" nonsense one more time I _will _turn myself into your girl and sodomise myself with a pineap –" he is cut off mid word by Thor throwing himself onto him and stopping his words with a heavy had across the mouth.

"Dear gods _shut up _Loki!" Loki waggles his eyebrows in amusement and Thor takes away his hand, twisting it into his hair.

"There now –" Loki purrs, wriggling comfortable beneath his brother – "That's a bit more like it!"

_x_

**:-) I did things. **

**One more chapter methinks – this time getting graphic again! **

**I should point out that I have intentionally steered away from going too deeply into anybody's issues here just because I want to do it more thoroughly in later fics – likewise I haven't given this a context any less vague than just that it's set after Dark World – just because as a first Thorki I wanted to keep this short and scene – based. **

**Also yes, I couldn't think of a name for an Asgard tavern so I pinched one out of Skyrim. It works. :-)**


	3. Chapter 3

**Last chapter. This be porn. :-)**

**3.**

Thor tries not to tremble; it is after all ridiculous given his size and strength and how the storm clouds gather outside the window when he does. But the trickster's hair is like silk in his fingers and the wrist he holds tight against the pillow beats with a silvery thrumming pulse and _truly – _he thinks – _is this all it takes to undo me utterly? _And is it safe now to confess this? He scowls and relaxes his grip on Loki's wrist, turning it into a caress, tracing the veins up his brother's inner arm until Loki hisses and squirms.

"You're thinking again –" he accuses – "I do wish you'd stop, it must be so hard for you – really, I can all but feel the pain –"

"Loki –" Thor growls warningly – "Do you _ever _shut up?"

Loki smirks and licks his lips a little –

"Make me."

Thor grins back in acceptance of that challenge; crashing his lips into Loki's savagely, pulling his head back with fingers twisted into his hair to drink deeply of all he has too long been denied. Loki curls playful fingers around Thor's neck, stroking and playing with his hair like a kitten, the look in his eyes wondering, almost afraid and almost adoring. When Thor opens his eyes to lean back for breath that look catches on a heartbeat – so much in it of the boy he had always loved.

"Loki?" he cannot help but be concerned – "What is it?"

"What is _what?"_

"You looked – scared."

Loki snorts a little too theatrically.

"Oh please, I'm not that over – awed by your magnificence, you're imagining things – witless oaf" he adds the last a little half- heartedly for good measure.

"Is this really the time to insult me? I could just stop this –"

Loki's eyes widen with glee –

"_Liar!_" he cackles – "Oh brother I'm so _proud – _I didn't know you had it in you! Of course I can insult you later instead – when you are in _me –"_

Thor almost chuckles and lets it go this time, not pointing out any of what comes to mind – that Loki always makes fun to avoid talking about his feelings. That it's alright for him to be afraid – he used to always bring his fears to him. That those flashing eyes cut into his soul. Instead he half smiles, half shakes his head –

"I remember –" he says and groans softly as Loki's hands adventure across his back and those teasing lips trail wicked kisses along his jaw, letting him do the talking for once – and it feels like being healed, like coming home –

"I remember everything – how your touch lit a thousand fires in my skin which could then be quenched only in you. How I came to you with my every need until you became the only cause of those needs. I remember all those nights we spent after fighting side by side – spent them in the same way. How I knew – I have always known – that nobody else would ever really be enough for me – because of you. Centuries of you and me and I remember them all – do you too remember brother?"

Loki meets his searching gaze, his eyes wary;

"I do" he says finally, almost like a wedding vow. For a moment it seems like he will say nothing else, then Thor's hands move, exploring and reclaiming every inch of the body he has known so well – "I remember every touch –" he whispers, in a voice as far away as winter seems to summer – "I remember the warmth, the life of you inside me. I remember every promise you made, every silly worry that this was wrong. I remember in the end you always wanted me more than wrong could matter. I remember – what love felt like –" Thor kisses away the tear that slips from Loki's eye and Loki blinks fiercely, trying to forget –

"I remember losing you. I remember all the time without you, shut out from the light. I remember hating you. I remember breaking as I broke your heart –"

"Loki –" Thor traces a finger across the soft terrible lips – "Loki, do not –"

Loki nods, grimacing, choking back the mess of feelings piling up in his throat beneath the weight of speaking truths.

"No then" he agrees – "As you will; now please –" and a snarl creeps into his voice, his nails raking down Thor's back hard enough to hurt just a little – "For god's sake fuck me brother."

Thor growls at that combination of words, dipping his head to rain kisses down Loki's neck, his hands grasping Loki's hips to pull him roughly towards him, pushing his legs up now with urgent need to shove his fingers into Loki's tight opening, making him shriek and twist away –

"Dear gods you imbecile – have you never heard of lubrication? Of are you too undone by the words _brother _and _fuck _in the same sentence to form a basic thought? Here –" he grabs the bottle from beside the bed and throws it to Thor who catches it, glaring at Loki at the same time –

"Any more inane babble from you and I may _choose _not to use it!" he growls.

"Yes well I may _choose _to disappear myself again and leave you embarrassingly humping your own bed sheets!"

Thor sighs and slams his hand over Loki's mouth, forcing him into silence while he trickles the oil first over his fingers and then his cock, powerfully hard now and hurting with the need to be buried inside his brother's body. He keeps the hand over his mouth as he thrusts into him hard, pausing to relish the feeling while muffling Loki's screams. Shuddering with ecstasy he pounds into his brother feverishly as the pleasure floods him completely and he roars his delight out loud. He feels as though his skin has been burning all this time they have been apart and Loki's body is the softest snow, so delicious against his painful heat he could roll in this forever.

By the time he removes his hand from Loki's mouth to wrap it around his cock Loki's screams of pain have dulled into aching groans of pleasure.

"_Fuck –" _he hisses, as Thor squeezes and strokes at him, letting his know in a series of growls how much he has missed this too – "Fuck – brother –"

It undoes Thor completely – as Loki had known it would, and he smirks in the brief smug moment just before Thor comes into him roaring , filling him with heat enough to even thaw a little of the ice in his heart. A moment later Loki joins him, pressing against him as he cries out more needily than he will later admit, needing Thor's warmth just as Thor needs his coolness.

Thor slumps across Loki, finally genuinely sated, panting in relief and breathlessness. Loki enjoys the closeness for as long as he can before he starts to bat at him with his hands –

"Geroff!" he grumbles – "You're killing me you great oaf!"

Thor moves slowly, rolling over to lie on his back –

"You are rude" he states amiably.

"Yes? Well, you're heavy."

"Loki –" Thor murmurs, drowsy, thick and glowing, Loki reading so much love in his voice and eyes that he twitches nervously –

"Don't get mushy on me brother, I fear I may –"

"Reciprocate?"

"Vomit. But I congratulate you on your usage of syllables – and at such a time!"

"Loki!"

"Your post – coital flaccidity is amusing but your sentiments are frankly nauseating –"

"LOKI!"

"Brother dearest?"

"Do shut up I beg of you."

Loki lies back and grins, hands behind his head, then just as quickly flips onto his side, pulling a bed sheet up around himself. Not for the first or the last time Thor watches him curl up and puzzles how he can go so fast from firing his every sense to looking like the child he had known. He shakes his head slightly, wishing he could just say three words. But not yet. One day again maybe but not yet. For once he cannot read the look in Loki's eyes so does not know that he wishes he could say it too.

"Thor –" Loki whispers, barely audibly, struggling hard, frightened enough by what he can say, his eyes wide –

"Hmmm?"

"…hold me?"

Thor smiles like sunshine, understanding how hard it is for Loki to bring himself to say something he would see as such incriminating weakness. He opens his arms in a heartbeat and scoops him close. He rocks him gently until he stops trembling and watches over him until he finally falls asleep.

_x_

**Finished! There was so much I wanted to write here that I couldn't get into without it becoming really long….but rest assured I have plenty more Thorki to come! :-)**


End file.
